[Kroem3r]

This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"?

After decades of work they are orders of magnitude away from break-even. Makes me wonder if the goal is actually break-even and/or power generation. Not really; but it's a revealing question.

I'm no great fan of the budgets these huge projects pull down; I think the bang-for-the-buck is greater elsewhere. But modelling nuclear weapons is an even greater waste of time. It's all kind of a sad epigraph about national science and technology initiatives.

Assuming the modest proposition that fusion energy is possible, why not make fusion energy a 'man on the moon' kind of national goal? It's hardly in doubt that we need a large source of clean energy. Is it a failure of imagination? Is it a failure of the political system - Can't get Bubba to vote for no fusion thing. Is the status quo energy system resistant to change? Whatever, the NIF thing just makes me depressed.

[dmfdmf]

> It's hardly in doubt that we need a large source of clean energy.

From one of my nuke profs, depending on how fusion is achieved its not all together clear that it would be any cleaner than fission. Something like 16MEV neutrons are going to cause neutron activation in tons of shielding. So all we do is swap tons of spent fuel from fission plants for tons of activated material from fusion plants, assuming we can even get there.

[lisper]

> This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"?

It's not newsworthy, but most reporters are not educated enough to tell the difference between a real breakthrough and a bogus press release.

[hotpockets]

It is newsworthy. We generated fusion be shining light at molecules, which never has been done before. Aside from that, if you read the article you became slightly more science literate.

[gus_massa]

Fusion with laser has been done before, by the same team. The difference is that they improve the experiment and this time they get ~50% more energy. Or if you evaluate it in other words, the efficiency improve from ~0.6% to 1%, or less depending on what do you define by input energy. More details in other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227620

[Kroem3r]

I think it is newsworthy, but not for the technical details. It's newsworthy because it's such a huge budget, because it's been neutered, because fusion energy research is pathetically funded, and because NIF is like a mean old dog lying in front of the fireplace, farting from time to time - it creams the resources and makes alternatives unappealing.

[NatW]

It’s a very important milestone achieved by a clever invention to harness the brute force better.